Campaign calculus as complex as it gets

By Chris ReedUNION-TRIBUNE

June 4, 2006

Two months ago, when Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray won spots in Tuesday's 50th Congressional District runoff, there were two distinct, dueling narratives on what the special election to fill the final six months of the term of disgraced, imprisoned former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham would be about.

The inside-the-Beltway set held up the race as an early, suburban California version of the national referendum coming in November on the corruption and incompetence of the GOP Congress – exemplified by veteran Republican lawmaker Cunningham – as well as the woes of the Bush White House. That Busby could get 44 percent of the vote in an 18-candidate field in the April 11 open primary in a conservative, wealthy district was touted as a strong sign that national Republicans were on track for the same sort of congressional wipeout that Democrats suffered in 1994.

In San Diego, however, the animating issue in the race appeared to be illegal immigration; even Busby had nice things to say about the Minutemen. Yes, there was disgust with Cunningham, but voters were far more anxious over their sense that few people in Washington shared their anxieties over our porous borders.

Then something peculiar happened. In recent weeks – between the congressional debate over the Bush administration's intense push for “comprehensive immigration reform,” the mass Latino walkouts and rallies over a tough enforcement bill passed by the House, and Bilbray's sharp criticism of the White House's immigration prescription – the two narratives essentially merged. For both Democrats and Republicans, a vote for either Busby or Bilbray became a proxy to express discontent over the ways of Washington.

“The angry white guy is still the most prevalent voter in the 50th, and he's [incensed] about both illegal immigration and what [Democrats] call the 'culture of corruption,'” says Orange County-based pollster Adam Probolsky. “The issues feed off each other.”

This convergence, as well as the candidates' specific strengths and weaknesses, has yielded an unusually complicated race. Virtually every argument put forward by those who expect Bilbray to win and by those who count on a Busby upset face powerful counter-arguments. Four examples:

Bilbray's work as a lobbyist since losing his South County congressional seat in 2000 is tailor-made for the multimillion-dollar Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad campaign defining him as “part of the (D.C.) problem.” But the key issue Bilbray lobbied for – a harsh crackdown on illegal immigration – is dear to many voters' hearts.

Bilbray's braying over what he calls “amnesty” proposals will drive up turnout among conservatives infuriated by the president's and the Senate's immigration squishiness. But Bilbray's history of moderate to liberal stands on gun control, abortion and gays will keep many social conservatives home – and popular GOP blogger Jon Fleischman has kept the spotlight for weeks on Bilbray's apostasy.

Busby has such an unthreatening manner and background – soccer mom and school board trustee – that the multimillion-dollar National Republican Congressional Committee ad campaign that attempts to paint her as a pedophile-tolerating North County version of Michael Moore seems hysterical. But the most effective attack ads of the campaign haven't been the borderline smears. They've been those documenting Busby's Bush-like views on illegal immigration and the liberal rhetoric of her 2004 congressional campaign, in which she managed to win just 38 percent of the vote against Cunningham.

Since illegal immigration is Issue No. 1, the more passionate voters – and thus those most likely to turn out – are going the way of hard-liner Bilbray. But Democrats have a bitterly contested gubernatorial primary to draw them to the polls, while Republicans have no exciting statewide primary race or controversial proposition to stir them to vote.

It's not just the bile of both candidates' attack ads that produce migraines. The complexity of the 50th's political calculus also inspires headaches.

Nevertheless, for all the complicating factors suggesting an unusually volatile electorate, the conventional wisdom – that Bilbray holds off Busby and keeps the seat for the GOP – still seems sound. Yes, polls predict a close vote, and some have Busby in the lead. But in modern California political history, no congressional district with a solid Republican voter-registration margin has elected a Democrat – and Republicans have a huge edge in the 50th, with 44 percent of voter registration compared with 30 percent for Democrats. Bilbray's campaign was so carefully focus group-tested and scripted that there was never much of a chance he would make a catastrophic mistake that would negate this advantage, and he didn't.

Still, the Democrats have a consolation prize. It's not remotely as good as Busby pulling an upset and triggering an avalanche of stories about a conservative San Diego County district taking the a historic first step toward a national repudiation of a Republican-controlled Washington.

But it's not bad: The powerful evidence that George W. Bush's post-Katrina bid to salvage his presidency is in trouble, buffeted by his decision to crusade on what appears – politically, at least – to be the exact wrong issue. Bilbray won't bad-mouth Bush directly, yet the fact is he has spent much of the past eight weeks trashing the president's immigration proposals. A central theme of his campaign has been that given his six years of congressional experience, he'll be able to hit the ground running once elected. And what will be his top priority once he's off and running? Thwarting the president's principal domestic initiative.

So much for the opining of White House press secretary Tony Snow and GOP Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham that the key to electoral success is embracing “comprehensive immigration reform.” The rank-and-file Republicans in a district near the front lines of illegal immigration didn't agree.

“Sending a wake-up call to Washington, D.C., and the national Republican leadership is going to happen,” says Howard Kaloogian, a veteran North County GOP officeholder who lost to Bilbray in the first round of voting. “If it doesn't happen here, it's going to happen elsewhere.”

“Bush either doesn't have his finger on the pulse or doesn't care what the public thinks (because) he just has strong feelings on the issue,” says Probolsky.

If it's the latter, that arguably reflects well on the president. We'd benefit from having more leaders whose convictions aren't abandoned for what their consultants tell them will be popular.

But come Tuesday, when voters from Encinitas to Rancho Penasquitos to La Jolla straggle to the polls, this sort of detached observation isn't likely to be uppermost on voters' minds. Instead, it will be choosing between a candidate who explicitly says George W. Bush can't be trusted on her big issues and a candidate who all but says Bush can't be trusted on his big issue.

Local and national pundits will begin plumbing the 50th vote for its greater significance as soon as early results are announced Tuesday night. But what we know already is in its own way remarkable. In a wealthy, conservative congressional district with a consistent pro-GOP history, both the Democratic and Republican candidates saw distancing themselves from the president as smart politics. If Bilbray wins, the result will be conventional. Yet his path back to the House would have been anything but.

Reed is a San Diego Union-Tribune editorial writer who writes frequently about politics and Congress. He can be reached via e-mail at chris.reed@uniontrib.com